


Overseas Teambuilding Strategies

by StrangerInAStrangePlace



Category: Captain America (Movies)
Genre: But It's Mostly Implied By Sam, Clint Barton Talks Way Too Much, Minor Sharon Carter/Steve Rogers, Missing Scene, Sam Wilson is So Done, implied Sam/Natasha
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-29
Updated: 2016-08-29
Packaged: 2018-08-11 17:28:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,637
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7901449
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/StrangerInAStrangePlace/pseuds/StrangerInAStrangePlace
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"We’re three international fugitives, on foreign soil, with a whole lot of enemies and a clown car full of stolen tactical gear."</p><p>Or: The one where Steve, Bucky and Sam travel through Germany in a Volkswagen and bicker over who gets to join their team.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Overseas Teambuilding Strategies

**Author's Note:**

> Somewhere along the line I developed a head canon that Clint Barton hero-worships Bucky the way Coulson does Steve, and maybe that's how they convinced him to suit up and join Team Cap. It sort of morphed into 3600 words of something else entirely and became the Road Trip Bros fic that nobody really asked for. Alas.

“We need a game plan,” Steve says as he climbs back into the Volkswagen, awkwardly folding his limbs to fit into the front scene. Sharon has already driven off, but Bucky and Sam are still smirking at him, and he makes a big show of finding his seatbelt, presumably so he doesn’t have to look at either of them.  
  
“We need more than three people,” Sam points out, and Steve hums in agreement.  
  
“We need a bigger car,” Bucky grumbles from the backseat, and Sam reclines his seat another couple of inches.  
  
“More people would be good,” Steve mutters. “I don’t think anyone is going to let us go without a fight, right?”  
  
“Seems unlikely,” Sam replies, turning his phone over in his hands. For a moment there was blessed silence, and then Steve clears his throat.  
  
“I’m open to suggestions,” he says. Bucky shrugs. “Everyone I know is in this car.”  
  
“Right.” Steve frowns, tapping his thumb on the steering wheel.  
  
“Nat?” Sam suggests, perking up, but Steve shakes his head.  
  
“She signed the Accords. Her hands would be tied even if she was inclined to help us. Which she probably isn’t, judging by how things have gone so far.” Sam seems to wilt before there eyes, and Bucky pats him on the shoulder in a way that manages to be sarcastic without him saying a word. Sam manages not to say “Fuck you,” but it’s a very near thing.  
  
“You guys have other people you can call, though.” Bucky looks between the two of them. Sam suddenly sits up straighter and starts tapping on his phone. “I mean, you do, right? It’s not like we’re the only three left.”  
  
“On it,” Sam says, still focused on the screen of his phone.  
  
“On it?” Steve echoes. “On what, who are you calling?”  
  
“Texting, old man,” Sam corrects him, just to watch Steve get that crease between his eyebrows. “You remember Scott Lang?”  
  
Steve’s blank look confirms that he does not, in fact, remember Scott Lang. That’s okay, Sam reckons he’s had a lot on his mind for the last 90 some-odd years. He can let this one slide.  
  
“He snuck onto the compound last year. Remember? We had an altercation in the yard?”  
  
“What kind of altercation?” Bucky asks, leaning forward and suddenly showing more interest.  
  
“No kind of altercation,” Sam snaps, pausing to glare until Bucky sits back with a small huff.  
  
“Oh, Scott,” Steve says suddenly, snapping his fingers. “Ant-Man, right? I‘ve never met him myself, but we’ve been keeping tabs on him since last year.”  
  
“Ant-Man?” Bucky sounds like he’s not sure he’s pronouncing the name right.  
  
“Yeah, that’s what they call him because he’s tiny.”  
  
“He’s…tiny.” Bucky looked like he was waiting to hear why someone whose superpower was being tiny would be of any great help to them.  
  
“Not all the time,” Steve says. “He shrinks. Well. He doesn’t shrink, himself. He has a suit that shrinks, makes him tiny. Ant-size. Hence the name.”  
  
“Sure,” Bucky says, looking at Steve like he’s lost his mind.  
  
“It’s not just that he’s tiny, though,” Sam adds. “When he shrinks, it gives him super-human strength or something. It‘s crazy, man, I‘m telling you.” Sam shakes his head.  
  
“He has a shrinking suit that gives him super-human strength?” Bucky blinks. “You can do that now?”  
  
“Welcome to the future, Tin-Man.” Sam shrugs and Bucky makes a sound in the back of his throat, raking a hand through his hair.  
  
“Hey, Steve,” Sam whispers. Steve looks over and Sam holds out his fist. “Agent Carter. Pound it, man.”  
  
Steve rolls his eyes, but he gives Sam the fist-bump anyway.  
  
\+ + +  
  
“Scott’s in,” Sam says some time later, as his phone starts vibrating frantically. “I gave him the rundown, he’s good to go.”  
  
“In - he’s in?” Steve leans over to look at the screen, apparently forgetting that he’s supposed to be driving. “What do you mean gave him the rundown, what did you say to him?”  
  
“Nothing specific, man, calm down.” Sam shoves Steve back into his seat. “I told him I was with Captain America, we’ve run into trouble and need some reinforcements, and has he ever been to Germany? He’s just excited that Captain America is asking for his help; if I said you needed him to do your laundry, he’d probably be all over it.”  
  
“That’s your move, name-dropping Captain America?” Bucky’s folded himself into the back seat and he’s speaking from underneath the arm that’s currently draped across his face.  
  
“Man, absolutely, if it gets the job done. Which it clearly did, by the way, so you’re welcome.” Sam glances at Steve. “I told him you asked for him by name. Be nice when he gets here.”  
  
Steve gives him a deeply unimpressed look, but a new thought is occurring to him. “Hang on a second, why do you have Scott Lang’s number stored in your phone?”  
  
“I looked him up in the database once.”  
  
“Why?”  
  
“It’s definitely not because I got drunk and decided to crank call him in the middle of the night,” Sam mutters. Steve side-eyes him before turning his attention back to the road. “Hey, look, before you can say anything, this is the dude that snuck into my house, messed with me on my turf, and thought he could nice-guy his way out of it.”  
  
“He did take you out pretty quick,” Steve says, and Sam points his phone at him. “That’s what I’m talking about! Really, with our resources, a few phones calls are a pretty mild revenge, if you want my opinion.”  
  
_Fair point_ , Steve thinks, and doesn’t push the issue further.  
  
“You took an ass-kicking from a guy called Ant-Man?” Bucky asks in a carefully neutral tone of voice. Sam declines to comment.  
  
\+ + +  
  
“There’s one slight problem,” Sam says when they’re at a rest stop. He’s been texting steadily for the last half hour. Steve is in the middle of refueling; Bucky is poking dubiously at one of the sandwiches Sam had bought with his metal finger.  
  
“What is this?” he asks, but Sam just shrugs. “I don’t know, I don’t speak German.”  
  
Bucky shoots him a look. “I speak German.”  
  
“Then maybe you should do the shopping next time.”  
  
“Guys,” Steve interrupts, sounding like his patience is beginning to fray. He replaces the pump in the handle with more force than is strictly necessary while the other two mumble apologies. “What kind of problem, Sam?”  
  
“Getting Lang out here,” Sam says. “The dude’s on parole, it’s not like he can just hop on the next flight to Germany.”  
  
“Why can’t he just shrink himself and stow away in someone’s handbag?” Bucky suggests. He’s been eyeing his sandwich with trepidation but decides to finally dive in. The look on his face tells them exactly how he feels about _that_.  
  
“That’s just not how these things are done, man,” Sam says, because in all honesty he’s sort of pissed that he didn’t think of it first. Bucky stares back, unimpressed, and tries not to choke on another bite of his sandwich.  
  
“Sam’s right, too many risks,” Steve says, and Sam does a mental fist pump. Damn right. “We don’t know enough about how the suit works, or how it’ll react in a pressurized cabin. For all we know it could deactivate mid-flight and he could blow out the overhead bin, and that’s the last thing any of us needs. We’re trying to keep a low profile.”  
  
“Dude. Seriously?” Sam can’t help the words from coming out of his mouth. Steve ignores him and nods at Bucky’s sandwich. “That any good?”  
  
“No.” Bucky offers it to him. Steve takes a bite, chews twice, shrugs, and takes another. Ignoring the look of disbelief that Bucky gives him, he swallows and says, “I might have an idea.”  
  
\+ + +  
  
“This is a bad idea,” Sam tells him. “I really want you to think about why this might be a bad idea.”  
  
“Got a better one?” Steve says, thumbing through his contacts. They’d driven another twenty miles down the road and pulled off when they’d found a spot that seemed fairly secluded, where they were unlikely to be noticed. Bucky is sitting on the ground with his back against the car, out of sight from the passing traffic. Steve is leaning up next to him, one foot propped up against the passenger door. Sam is standing opposite both of them, arms crossed tightly against his chest because at some point he had started playing the role of “Disapproving Parent” to these century-old degenerates and man, did that rankle.  
  
“Don’t call Barton,” Sam tries again.  
  
“We need more people, you said so yourself.”  
  
“We have more people.”  
  
“We have one.”  
  
“Okay, so. Think of someone else. Who isn’t retired,” Sam adds pointedly. “Who doesn’t have children.”  
  
“He has kids?” Bucky says, looking up at Steve and shielding his eyes with his flesh hand. “Aw Steve, c’mon. There’s gotta be someone else.”  
  
“What makes you think he’ll even agree to come?” Sam asks. “Maybe you’ll call, he’ll laugh and tell you to go fuck yourself, and that’ll be that.”  
  
“I just am,” Steve replies without looking up. Bucky and Sam both stare at him and wait for him to elaborate.  
  
“Nope,“ Sam says, when it becomes obvious he won’t. “If you think that ‘Because I said so’ is going to be enough to put an end to this conversation, you are out of your damn mind.”  
  
Steve frowns and taps his thumb against the side of this phone twice, glancing down at Bucky. Bucky stares back, brow furrowed slightly. Sam watches them both like the patient bastard he knows he can be.  
  
Finally, Steve huffs a breath through his nose and says, “Clint kind of has a thing for Bucky.”  
  
Sam’s eyebrows recede somewhere into the vicinity of his hairline. “I’m sorry, he has a what now?”  
  
“What kind of thing?” Bucky says. He sounds alarmed; Sam can’t blame him.  
  
Steve waves an arms helplessly.  
  
“It’s sort of a…God. What’s the word?”  
  
“Mancrush?” Sam suggests, enjoying the undignified little sound that Bucky lets out.  
  
“Not…exactly?” Steve considers it a moment. “It’s more like…a hero worship thing, I guess.”  
  
“That’s even worse,” Bucky groans, drawing his legs up and dropping his forehead onto his knees.  
  
“Hold on, hold on.” Sam holds up his hands. “I’m missing something. Since when does Clint Barton have a hero crush on Barnes here? That doesn’t make any sense. No offense,” he adds as an afterthought, but Bucky just waves him off.  
  
“I don’t know his exact reasons,” Steve says, sounding a little tetchy. “I just know he would bring him up a lot, ask about our time together with the Howling Commandos, if all the stories were true.” He looks down at Bucky again, who’s still resting his head against his legs. “You’re in all the history books, Buck. As far as snipers go, you’re considered one of the best. Clint liked to hear about it first-hand, asked if you were as good a shot as everyone said.”  
  
“Hope you told him I was.”  
  
“Of course I did.”  
  
Bucky lifts his head, looking slightly pleased despite himself. “So he’s a shooter too?”  
  
“Sort of,” Steve says.  
  
“He’s an archer,” Sam supplies helpfully.  
  
“Like a bow and arrow?”  
  
“Yep.”  
  
“A little different from a sniper rifle, Stevie,” Bucky points out dryly. Sam snorts.  
  
“I know that,” Steve says. “He told me that he picked up a lot of the discipline from reading about you. Said it was what made him want to be as good as he was, even if he wasn’t carrying a gun.”  
  
Bucky stares at him in outright disbelief before looking back down at his feet, tapping his metal fingers against the ground nervously.  
  
“So your plan,” Sam says, “just to sum it up, is to call this guy, drag him out of retirement, pull him away from his family, and have him haul himself and an ex-con to a foreign country, and you’re going to convince him to do it by telling  him his personal hero needs his help so he’d better come running.”  
  
After an uncomfortable pause, Steve says, “Yes.”  
  
“Dude.”  
  
“I know.”  
  
“Do you?”  
  
“Yes!”  
  
“Because I’m not sure you do.”  
  
“What do you want, Sam?” Steve snaps, dropping the hand holding his phone to his side. “Honestly, what do you think we should do instead? Who should we call? Because I don’t see a lot of options at the moment. And I’m trying to, I really am. But we’re three international fugitives, on foreign soil, with a whole lot of enemies and a clown car full of stolen tactical gear. And that’s _it_. And I know it’s not fair to drag Clint into the middle of it, especially not like this, okay? I know it _sucks_ , but I also know it’ll work, and right now I’m willing to take any damn advantage we can get.”  
  
Bucky reaches up and gently pries the phone out of Steve’s hand before he can crush it in his death grip.  
  
Steve takes a breath and scrubs a hand over his face. “Tell me another way,” he says softly, almost pleading.  
  
Nobody says anything, and then Bucky hands his phone back to him.  
  
\+ + +  
  
Clint’s enthusiasm when they get him on the phone is thoroughly disarming, especially considering the conversation it had taken to get him on the line.  
  
“You know you can call me anytime, Cap,” he says, voice loud over the speakerphone. “Honestly, between you and me,” and his voice drops conspiratorially, as though he’s letting them in on a great secret, “retirement is _bullshit_. I’ve never been so bored in my entire goddamn life. I-” There’s the sound of a small voice in the background and Clint says, “No, no, don’t say that. That’s a - yeah, you’re right, it’s a very bad word, I shouldn’t be saying it either. I know.”  
  
Bucky is glowering at Steve again. _Kids_ , he mouths, and Steve looks guilty as he shrugs.  
  
“Sorry, we’re practicing this whole ‘you can hear it you just can’t say it’ thing.”  
  
“How’s that going?” Steve can’t help himself.  
  
“About as well as you might expect. What can I do for you?”  
  
The moment of truth. “We’ve sort of gotten ourselves into some trouble. We were wondering if you might be able to help us out.”  
  
“When you say trouble, do you mean Vienna, Bucharest, or Berlin? Just so we’re all on the same page.”  
  
“Kind of all three.”  
  
Clint whistles. “Man, when you break the rules, you break them hard.” Steve bristles a little at this, because honestly, he’s been breaking rules since before any of them were even born. When he and Bucky were kids the nuns at school were convinced they were both going to hell. Not to mention all the property damage and government agencies he’d destroyed in Washington DC, and it’s not like he’s proud of any of that, but it was only two years ago so why does everyone act so damn surprised when he puts a toe out of line? Why did they expect him to be such a Boy Scout?  
  
“Cap, look, I gotta ask,” Clint is saying, pulling Steve back from his mental rant. “All that stuff about the explosion in Vienna, with the Accords. Man, they’re all saying the Winter Soldier is responsible for it. I mean, everyone is saying it. Everyone. It’s like the only thing they can all agree on. So I mean…” Clint trails off.  
  
“Is it true?” Steve supplies.  
  
“Yeah, exactly.” Clint sounds relieved that he didn’t have to ask if his idol had blown up a building full of important people. “I mean, it’s not, right? Because it all sounds like a load of crap to me, honestly, but I mean-”  
  
“It’s not,” Steve says, cutting him off at the pass. “None of it is true. He’s being framed, he was nowhere near Vienna when the bomb went off.” He glances at Bucky and adds, “The Winter Solder hasn’t been active since the fight in Washington.” Bucky raises his eyebrows in a way that says, _Except for that helicopter we destroyed in Berlin, you mean._  
  
“I knew it!” Clint’s voice is triumphant. “I knew it was bullshit! It had to be, it made no fuckin’ sense. Nobody’s heard a peep from the guy in two years. Like we’re supposed to believe he just woke up one morning and said, hey, I feel like blowing up a building today. Come on.”  
  
“Thank you,” Bucky mutters, and the line goes quiet long enough that they start to wonder if the connection has been lost.  
  
“Was that him? It was, wasn’t it? Holy shit.”  
  
Steve looks at Bucky, who clears his throat and says, awkwardly, “Nice to meet you, Agent Barton.”  
  
“Holy shit! Okay. Wait, am I on speakerphone? You’ve had me on speakerphone this whole time? Jesus, Rogers, you wanna warn a guy next time? I could’ve made a real idiot of myself!”  
  
“Yeah, that would really suck for you,” Sam mumbles, though he’s pretty sure he’s too far away for the phone to actually pick up his voice. Not that it would matter, since Clint is still talking.  
  
“Sergeant Barnes, it’s an honor to be talking to you face to face. Sort of.” Bucky quirks an eyebrow but doesn’t interrupt. “And let me just be the first to say that what’s happening to you right now is absolute bullshit. Completely fucked up situation.”  
  
“Well. Thank you, I guess. And, uh, Bucky’s fine.”  
  
“Bucky, right, absolutely.” Clint has the slightly dazed voice of a teenager who’s just tried out kissing for the first time. “Seriously, man, whatever you need. I’m your guy. I figure you can use all the help you can get right now, you know what I mean?”  
  
“Why, what’re they saying?” Bucky leans closer to the phone, frowning now.  
  
“The networks are losing their collective shit over this. Every talking head in the United States seems to have an opinion on the Winter Soldier. Victim or war criminal, is Steve Rogers aiding a traitor, that sort of thing.” Clint snorts. “Nevermind that most of the Winter Soldier files are out there for anyone to see since Tasha dumped everything onto the internet. Fuck it, who has time to actually read and form their own opinions, right?”  
  
“War criminal,” Bucky echoes, looking ill.  
  
“Yeah, some people are even pushing the narrative that you turned traitor back in WWII and joined HYDRA willingly, which, I mean, if you actually read any of the files you would know is obviously not true, but they’re taking it and running with it.”  
  
“Who’s been saying that?” Steve’s tone is low, deadly.  
  
“A few people. That Ross guy has been really vocal about it. He wants the Soldier’s head on a platter on CNN primetime. I don’t know what you did to piss him off, Barnes, but he’s got an agenda against you and he’s pushing it hard.”  
  
“HYDRA?” Steve murmurs, but Bucky looks unsure. “If he was, I don’t know that our paths ever crossed. I don’t remember ever seeing him.” Which is not to say it never happened, which neither of them says out loud.  
  
“Doesn’t mean he wasn’t pulling some strings behind the scenes,” Sam says. “Guy like that, ‘plausible deniability’ are his two favorite words.”  
  
“Even if he’s not HYDRA, he’s a dangerous enemy to have,” Clint says. “Shoot first, ask questions later. If you ask them at all. And enough friends in high places to protect him from the fallout, too.”  
  
“There was a shoot to kill order on Bucky,” Steve tells him.  
  
“Funny, they didn’t seem to mention that on the news anywhere. Probably because there are, what, seventy-five human rights violations attached to an order like that? A veteran and former POW? A first-year law-student could tell you how illegal that is. Hell, my _kids_ could tell you how illegal that is. Jesus.”  
  
“Look, Clint.” Steve is rubbing the back of his neck the way he does when he gets stressed. “You know I wouldn’t be asking for your help here if we didn’t have to. I just don’t know who we can trust right now.”  
  
“Ask away, Cap, I already told you I’m at your disposal.” He doesn’t say “Bucky’s disposal” but they all hear it anyway.  
  
“We need you to come to Germany.”  
  
“Okay. When?”  
  
“What, no questions asked?” Sam says, incredulous. “What about your family?”  
  
“Well, I was planning on taking the kids water-skiing, but I guess that’ll have to wait.”  
  
“Water-skiing?” Steve says. “Aren’t they a little young for that?”  
  
“Well, I wasn’t going to take the baby,” Clint says, like Steve’s the idiot for asking. Steve lets its go and asks if he can pick Scott up and get him there under the radar.  
  
“Piece of cake. Send me his information and I’ll get it done. And Cap, I just want you to know that I am fully prepared to raise hell for you.”  
  
“Thanks, Clint, but I think we’d like to avoid raising hell if we can.”  
  
“Think that ship has sailed, pal,” Bucky drawls.  
  
“Oh my God,” Clint says.  
  
"Oh my God," Sam groans, rolling his eyes.  
  
Steve’s about to hang up but he pauses. “Hey Clint. Do you think you can stop by the Avengers Complex and pick up Wanda, too?”  
  
“Wanda? Why?”  
  
“Tony won’t let her leave.”  
  
After a moment, Clint says, “Stark, you son of a bitch,” and then the line goes dead.  
  
\+ + +  
  
Sam might have been worried about Clint’s rampant fanboying over Bucky, but it ends up being completely drowned out by Scott Land fanboying over Steve. Everyone wins, except for Steve.  
  
“Suit up,” Steve says. Everyone looks around, and then Scott says, “What, here?”  
  
  
  



End file.
